Black Princess of Aincrad
by Yakosh
Summary: Kiriko, who pretty much hates life and finds solace only in computers and other technology, jumps at Kayaba's offer. A short while later, she finds herself trapped inside Sword Art Online and seriously wanting to kill him. The T rating is for a small amount of swearing of the kind everybody already knows. 'Kiriko' is female Kirito, and also OP. Yuri. [Discontinued]
1. Chapter 1

**So this is the story I mentioned in my other story (Art of Combat Online) and wanting to finally get to writing this is part of the reason that one ended so abruptly. That said, this might still go nowhere.**

 **It is inspired to an extent by the author 'A New Username' (really creative name). The account is specifically for femKirito yuri pairings, which is why I say inspired by the author and not a particular story. Though if I had to pick a specific story it would probably be either Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman or** **Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman — Transcendent Bonds, which are related about as much as their names would suggest and in a rather confusing way, which in itself was a bit of inspiration for something that appears later in the story.**

 **This story will have an OC (Takano Sozen (username: Tazen), but the main character will be Kiriko (female Kirito). Though you already knew that from the summary, but whatever.**

 **If you don't like OP main characters... well, I ask you still give it a try, but honestly, you should just leave now. If you want to know what 'Kiriko' looks like, it's basically like Kirito's GGO avatar with slightly larger (as in, existent) breasts, with different gear obviously.**

 **Unlike my recent stories, this will be written in the first person (as opposed to third)—unless it feels too unnatural—because it has a single protagonist.**

 **Kiriko's initial, male avatar looks roughly like Kirito during SAO, except a little older.**

 **For pairings (if I have any), I haven't decided, however, since there aren't really any male characters around Kirito/Kiriko's age, aside from the OC, it will probably be yuri. I'm currently considering Kiriko X Argo, Kiriko X Sinon, Kiriko X Yuuki (as in Zekken), and somewhat less likely, Kiriko X OC and Kiriko X Asuna.**

* * *

 **(Kiriko)**

I smile as the fantasy world fades in around me. It's good to finally be back.

My avatar was male because I didn't want desperate male gamers hitting on me or giving me free stuff, and because people had a tendency not to take female gamers seriously.

I was one of the first in, however, the hundreds, thousands even, of other players (10000 sharp, including me) were logging in. I immediately run over to one of the many weapons stalls, beating most of the other players who were still stunned by the world, and even the beta testers simply by moving faster.

I intended to be strongest and I had had plenty of time to be amazed by the technology before.

I start to run down the north road of the [Town of Beginnings]. The circular city had its southern edge tangent to the inside of the southernmost point of the first floor of Aincrad, so the north road led towards most of the floating castle.

As I run, I hear someone call from behind me. "Hey! Wait up!"

I briefly contemplate ignoring them, but decide that I could spare a little time. I slow to a halt and look at the person who had called me.

A tall—at least compared to me—man with long purplish-red hair, matching eyes, and a red bandana. He had a loose white shirt with brown bands just above the cuffs and elbows were brown with a red leather half-vest of armor over it. It wasn't much, but then again, it was more than I had bothered with. He had dark brown pants that matched the accents on his shirt with black bands at around thigh level and lighter brown leather boots. He had a short, somewhat curved sword sheathed, attached to his brown leather belt.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"You look like you know where you're going. You were part of the beta test, right?" he responds with a question.

"So what if I was?" I reply.

"Look, I'm a total noob and I was wondering if you could spare a little time to show a rookie the ropes?" he asks.

Okay, this might take a while, but why not? It shouldn't slow my grinding down too much if I show him the basics.

"Fine. My name is Kiriko," I say.

"Thanks! Name's Klein," he says with a big smile.

I sigh and say, "Let's get to it then, Klein. I see you already have yourself a sword, so let's get to the fields and I can show you how to kill things."

"Thanks!"

I start running, slower than my previous pace—since speed depended both on stats and on how well you move in the game—so he could keep up and we reach the fields in a couple minutes.

"Let's go a little further since this place will be flocking with other noobs like you in a few minutes."

"Alright, you lead!" he says, still excited. I guess I can't blame him, I was pretty excited on my first dive too.

As we leave the city and head further out, I notice someone following us, someone I didn't notice before due to all the other people, but decide to ignore them for now. If someone tried to PK us, there's nobody who could possibly beat me. With no chance get anything that would allow you to play tricks, the best they would be able to do would be MPK or an ambush. No number of the [Frenzy Boars] here could ever beat me, no matter how bad my gear or low my level, and I already know they're there so they can't ambush me, which leaves a one on one duel of a fight of pure skill, which I'm not about to lose.

A couple more minutes of a slow run later, I say, "This should be far enough, let's get to it."

I kick up a pebble and catch it. I had selected [1H Sword] and [Throwing Weapons] as my two initial skills.

"Watch," I say and throw the pebble at the nearest [Frenzy Boar]. I didn't bother using a skill since it wouldn't do damage either way and my only goal was to attract the boar's attention.

The pebble strikes the boar square between the eyes and it squeals, turning to fully face me before breaking into a charge.

I draw my [Basic Sword] of unstated material off my back and get in position for the basic [Vertical] skill, letting it pop as the boar comes into range, the blazing blue sword moving down at unnatural speed and splitting the boar in half down the direction it was symmetrical about till about half way between its front and back legs. The boar's health drains from nearly full to yellow, to red, to zero, where it shimmers and shatters into polygons.

"Wow! Can I do that?" Klein exclaims.

"Not exactly, since you're using a curved sword, you have different skills. But you have you own, so it's your turn to try. You can check the starting positions and initial motions of all the sword skills you've unlocked if you tap on the skill in your menu," I say.

He goes into his menu and checks.

"Alright. You're turn to try," I say and kick up another pebble. I hurl it at a boar, this time using my [Throwing Weapons] skill since my target was farther away. I could hit without, but I didn't want to bother aiming.

I check on our follower, who had stopped and was hiding—fairly well, though not well enough to hide from me—and watching us. Maybe another noob who didn't know anything but didn't want to ask for help or risk having to walk back from dying.

I turn my attention back to Klein and see that he had raised his sword and failed miserably at using the skill, causing the boar to hit him right in the groin and knock him to the ground.

It gets to charge at him again, but I put my foot on its face and shove down, forcing it off-balance and to the ground.

He was clutching his crotch and swearing under his breath.

"Come on, get up. It doesn't even hurt," I say. Though I didn't know anything about how much getting hit in the nuts hurt in the real world, I _did_ know that there was barely any pain in SAO.

"Oh. You're right, it doesn't. Force of habit," he says.

How do you develop that kind of habit? Like, how much would you need to get hit in the crotch for that? Whatever.

"Try again. You need to let the pressure build and then let it pop," I say.

"Let it pop, let it pop. Got it," he says as I push the boar towards him.

It charges at him and his sword glows with the crimson light of [Reaver]—a skill not nearly awesome enough for its awesome name—and he thrusts forward with a horizontal jump, cutting off the top of the boar and making it shatter.

"I- I did it! I killed it!" he exclaims.

I sigh. "Hate to break it to you, but that boar was about as weak as slimes in other games."

"Huh? I thought that was a midlevel boss or something," he says.

I chuckle slightly.

I pick up another pebble and without the [Throwing Weapons] skill, chuck it with a large arc at our follower. If I used the skill, it would be determined as an attack and make my cursor orange if it hits, however, this was it wouldn't unless it did a large amount of damage, which it wouldn't even if it hit his head.

However, he catches it and I call, "Come out!"

Our follower comes out from his hiding place, allowing me to clearly see him. He was a young—not that that said anything since it was just his avatar—man with short black hair and dark green eyes. He was a little shorter than Klein and most of his dress was green and black. I could see a dagger sheathed on his side.

"So why are were you following us?"

"You noticed me?" he asks in mild surprise.

"As soon as we left the city. Now, what do you want?"

"I was hoping to see a bit of how this game is played."

"Great. Another total noob," I say with a sigh.

He growls. "I may not know how to play this game, but I can fight," he says in annoyance.

"Wonderful. Prove it," I say and send him a half-death duel request.

"Since you don't know how to play this game, I won't use [Sword Skills] either," I add.

He accepts the duel request and the timer counts down.

As it reaches 3, I say, "Land a hit on me and I'll teach you how to play the game."

"Just one?" he says with a cocky smile.

"Don't push your luck."

The timer reaches 0 and he moves forward with surprising speed, his dagger—held in his left hand—aimed at my neck. Not the easiest place to hit, but it seemed he was going for the win and not for a single hit. I lean to the side slightly and avoid the stab, the dagger passing millimeters from my neck. I grab his right wrist as he tries to punch me in the stomach

He runs past me on my left and breaks out of my grip and I spin round to strike him with my sword, however, despite it being impossible for him to have seen it, he blocks—mostly—the strike as he moves out of range.

I was tempted to say, "You pass," right there, just because he was able to avoid getting defeated by that strike alone.

He twists around and comes to a halt.

I smile. "Okay. Not bad."

"To be honest, I was expecting you to just be overly cocky and used to using overwhelming levels to overpower people. I didn't expect you to notice the punch."

He charges once more, stabbing twice quickly with his dagger in succession, both of which I block with twists of my blade. His blows were fast but lacked force. As he blocks my simple vertical strike, similar to the [Sword Skill] [Vertical] but with much, much less power. Power wasn't the point, the point was getting him to block it.

I drive my left hand forward in a fist, which he blocks with his right.

I lift my left hand to the hilt of my sword and apply all my strength, as opposed to a fraction of one hand's strength, to it. The sudden increase in force breaks through his guard and cuts him vertically on the chest as he jumps back.

Maybe it's time to play offensive? Or should I give him a few more chances?

...I guess he gets a few more chances.

Suddenly, he moves forward at speed far greater than before, both hands on his dagger as he drives it forward in a stab aimed once more at my neck. My eyes widen slightly in surprise as I move to the side, getting grazed by the slightest amount. I catch him in the stomach with my fist as he tries to move past me and bring my sword on his back, doing enough damage to win the duel but deliberately not enough to send him back to the [Black Iron Palace] where people who die respawn.

"I suppose that technically counts as a hit," I say.

"So you'll show me how to use those [Sword Skills] and various other game mechanics?" he asks, sounding sour at losing.

"Yes. My name's Kiriko, he," I say, gesturing to Klein, "is Klein."

"I'm Tazen," he responds.

"Alright. Well, Klein. To show that _you_ understand what I taught you, explain to him."

* * *

Tazen picked up on it much faster than Klein and rather quickly got the hang of killing the boars, after which we spent a few hours fighting the enemies. The amazing thing about SAO was that since you were fighting with your own body and not just pressing buttons on a computer, you could fight the same enemies over and over and it stayed fun for a while. Though for Kiriko it was a little boring, it was more or less necessary.

Currently, it was nearly 5:30 and they were taking a break.

"Thanks for all the help, I gotta log out, though, I ordered pizza for 5:30."

"You're prepared," I comment.

"Yeah," he says and opens his menu to log out.

A moment later he says, "Uh... total noob question, but... how do you log out?"

"Huh? It's right at the bottom of the menu..." I trail off as I check the menu and see nothing there.

"Well, it's the first day of launch. There's gotta be bugs," Klein says to reassure himself.

Yeah right. Kayaba doesn't make mistakes like that. Especially since there were no changes to the menu, so he wouldn't have had any chances to break it. Which meant that for whatever reason, Kayaba had decided to remove the log out button. And being the pessimist that I am, I had no hopes that it was an opening event of some kind.

"There's no way that kind of bug would make it past testing," Tazen points out.

"There's no way that kind of bug could be made in the first place. In other words, whatever this is, it's deliberate," I say.

"Isn't there some other way to log out ?" Klein asks, before proceeding to make some odd gestures and say things like 'logout', 'exit', and even 'escape'.

"Oh I know, I'll just pull the NerveGear off my head!" he says, before trying to do just that until Tazen points out, "You know, if you could move in the real world, you would have broken everything in your room and hurt yourself. The NerveGear intercepts, not just reads, the signals from the brain."

"Oh look, it's 5:30," I say.

"NOOOOO! My pizza!" Klein yells and collapses to his knees.

"I guess we have to wait until somebody pulls the NerveGears off our heads, however..."

"But I live alone," Klein says.

"Me too," Tazen says.

"My sister or mom will probably come fetch for me dinner in an hour or so."

"You have a sister!?" Klein asks, putting his hands on my shoulders and shaking me.

"How old is she?"

I sigh and kick him in the crotch. Well, that answers the question of how he got that habit.

Tazen chuckles.

Suddenly, a bell in the distance rings. A system announcement.

We are surrounded by a blinding blue light that blocks out everything, even the ground and each other, to the point where seeing my own hands was difficult and when it clears, we're standing back at the login plaza at the center of the [Town of Beginnings].

Red hexagons which had alternating messages of [Warning] and [System Announcment] on them appear, enclosing the plaza.

Then blood seems to seep between them at the center of the dome, pooling in the air and forming a giant figure of GM without any face and white gloves covering his hands.

He introduces himself as—unsurprisingly—Kayaba and says—unsurprisingly—that the lack of logout button was not a bug but a feature.

 **"The only way to log out now is to clear the game."**

A map of Aincrad appears, a red dot highlighted at the south of the first floor.

 **"You are currently on the first floor. Locate and defeat the boss and you will progress to the next floor. Reach and defeat the 100th boss and you clear the game."**

"The 100th floor? How are we supposed to do that? Even the beta testers never made it that far!" somebody yells.

We have ten times as many people now. Assuming we go 3 times faster, it'll take us half a year to beat the game. Ouch. Then again, I didn't have anything better to do.

 **"There will be no more respawns or revival items. When your HP hits zero, you will be erased from this world... and the real one. The NerveGear will destroy your brain."**

"Can it do that?!" Klein asks in shock.

"The NerveGear uses microwaves to intercept nerve signals. If the power output was drastically increased, it could cook your brain like a microwave," I say.

"Can't it just be unplugged or something?"

"No. The NerveGear has a battery which lasts roughly 30 minutes. If the output was increased by 1800x for a second, it would almost certainly kill the wearer," I explain.

 **"If somebody on the outside tries to remove the NerveGear or it loses power or connection for a prolonged period, it will also destroy the wearers' brain. Regrettably, the friends and family of some people have ignored these warning so we are 213 people down from when we started the game. They have been erased from both this world and the real one. The people on the outside will be given a grace period and the locations of all NerveGears to get everyone to hospitals."**

I grit my teeth. You treacherous, lying _bitch,_ Kayaba! "I'm gonna kill you, you piece of fucking shit" I whisper.

 **"These deaths are being covered by practically every news network in the world and the chances of NerveGears being removed is very slim, so you can relax and focus on clearing the game."**

He shows the various news feeds on screens to show he was serious.

 **"Lastly, I have left a present for each of you in your inventory, please, take a look."**

I open my inventory and find the present at the top. A mirror. I take it out and look at it. It was a perfectly generic, rectangular mirror.

Then, people start being surrounded by flashes of light like teleportation, reaching to me. This time, however, I couldn't even see my own hands.

When the light clears, I find that I'm a somewhat shorter and I look at the mirror. What I see is my real face. My long straight black hair and onyx eyes. The rest of me had also become my real self.

I look at the people standing where Klein and Tazen were standing. Tazen had hardly changed, though he was a little younger and shorter. He actually looked around my age, maybe a little older. Klein's hair was shorter and messier and less purplish, and he had a little scruff on his face. He was a little shorter than before.

"Our real bodies huh? This is our world now? Is that what you're saying?" I say to nobody in particular.

Klein and Tazen look at each other and at me.

"Kiriko... you're a girl!?" Klein asks in surprise.

"Yes. I don't like people hitting on giving me or free stuff, so I figured I'd made my avatar a boy," I say bluntly.

 **"This concludes the official tutorial of Sword Art Online. I wish you luck in clearing the game."**

The figure dissolves into mist, passing through the seams of the dome, which then disappears.

"Come on, we need to get out of here and get moving," I say, grabbing their wrists and pulling them through the crowd of stunned people and out of the plaza, along the north road.

After we get a short distance away, we stop in an alley.

"If you want to survive, you need to get strong. In games like this, spawn rates are limited, thus limiting total resources available after a certain amount of time. These fields will soon be hunted clean. I'm heading to the next town. It's considerably higher level and a fairly dangerous trip, but I know a relatively safe path that I can use to get there safely. I can take you two," I say.

Tazen nods, "I'll go."

Klein hesitates before saying, "I can't. I logged in with some friends, a guild from some other games, and they're still back at the plaza. I can't just leave them."

1 or 2 people I can take safely, but any more and I don't trust myself.

Apparently, Klein notices my hesitation and says, "It's alright. I can't ask you to risk your life for some total strangers, especially you helped me so much. Besides, with what you've taught me, we'll get by, no sweat!"

"Alright. But don't hesitate to message me if you ever need anything," I say.

"Come on, Tazen, let's go," I say.

* * *

Tazen, who had gotten fairly skilled in the various game mechanics and had combat skill pretty on point, to begin with, ran behind me as we ran towards [Horunka], where I would get an [Anneal Blade] and where we could farm the various higher level enemies for XP.

I slash through a wolf as it gets on our path and Tazen puts down another of the pack which leaps towards us. While in the real world, people didn't outrun wolves, but in SAO, if you knew how to run, you could, especially since these were low level. So that's exactly what we did.

By nightfall, we arrive in the town of [Horunka] and Tazen asks, "Is this it?"

"Yes. There's a specific quest I'd like to do, the sooner the better. The reward is a pretty good sword that'll be good enough for a few floors," I say.

* * *

 **Well, that'll conclude chapter one. Please tell me what you thought with a review, follow, and if you liked it for some reason, favorite.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Just a note at the beginning. This Kiriko is pretty much a psychopath. Note that psychopath ≠ sadistic. A psychopath isn't a 'psycho'. It just means lack or partial lack of empathy and remorse, antisocial behavior, and being bold, disinhibited, or egotistical. This Kiriko checks all those boxes except egotism and disinhibition. She's crazy is a way that may _seem_ disinhibited, but she carefully considers the dangers and consequences of her actions before promptly ignoring them.**

 **She is also basically immune to social pressure and really doesn't give a fuck what people think of her.**

* * *

As another kobold shatters after being bisected by my sword, I say, "Maybe we should get back to town for the day."

Tazen nods. "I am getting somewhat tired and there's no point taking risks. We've already explored a lot."

As we turn to head back, I hear the sound of metal clashing in the distance.

"Let's go say hi?" I offer.

"Why not?"

We follow the sounds of metal clashing on metal through the maze until we see someone cloaked in red with a rapier fighting some kobolds. While they were incredibly good with their [Linears] and the like, they were clearly exhausted and the kobolds were overwhelming them.

I sigh and draw my sword, approaching the creatures silently.

As I decapitate two of them, a few turn to me.

And then roughly 30 seconds later, they were all dead.

"If you keep doing that, you're going to die," I say to the rapier wielder.

"Why does it matter, we're all going to die here anyway."

It sounded like a girl's voice.

"I sure as hell don't plan to. And besides, you could apply that attitude to the real world too, 'we're all going to die at some point, so why not now?'" I say.

"So what are you going to do? Clear all 100 floors?" she asks.

"Yes, actually," I say.

"It's been nearly a month and we haven't even beaten the first one. Even if we killed the boss tomorrow, at that rate it'd take us 8 years to get out."

"That's because everybody has your attitude of it being impossible. If in the beta we could beat a floor every 5 or 6 days then with 10 times as many people, even with over leveling and overpreparation, we should be able to go at least as fast. Once we beat the first boss and show to the people like you that it _is_ possible to beat the game, it will be much faster."

I sigh. "When was the last time you left the dungeon?"

The fencer doesn't answer.

"Hello?"

She collapses. As she falls, I decide whether to catch her, eventually coming to 'yes' and catching her before she can actually hit the ground.

"Why do I get the feeling that wasn't instinctive at all and that you actually decided through conscious thought whether to catch her," Tazen comments.

"Because I did," I answer as I hold her bridal-carry style. Since this was SAO, lifting a person was rather easy.

"Come on, let's get out of here," I say.

* * *

I set her down against a tree outside the dungeon and Tazen asks, "So we just leave her here?"

"Why would I go through the trouble of carrying her out if I was planning on leaving her to just die here anyway. If she wants to die, she's welcome to, but not before she gives us her map data."

"So what? We watch her until she wakes up?"

"Hell no," I say and poke her cheek a few times, then proceed to shake her until she groans and opens her eyes.

"Huh? W-what? Where am I?" she mumbles.

"I carried you out of the dungeon after you passed out," I say.

"Why?"

"Because you have map data and letting you die would be a waste. And we were already on our way out so I figured it would be less effort to carry you out and wait here where there are fewer enemies."

She chuckles.

"Anyway, you're free to go kill yourself if you want after you hand over the map data."

"You're heartless," she mutters.

"Really? I thought I was being nice," I say sarcastically.

"Now just give us the map data and we'll be out of your hair."

"Fine, fine," the girl mumbles and a menu screen appears. I press accept.

"Goodbye," I say and turn around and start to leave.

Do I really want to let her kill herself? Why should I care what she does? Somebody cared for me and that's probably why I'm still alive. Whatever, it doesn't take much effort.

"You should get some sleep. And eat."

"Why should I eat? It's pointless."

"While you can't die of hunger, your brain still thinks you're hungry and it is distracting," I say and toss her a bun and cream.

"What's this?"

"Go ahead and find out. It actually makes the buns taste passable," I say and follow after Tazen.

* * *

A couple days later, there was a boss meeting headed by a man named Diabel, and while he looked different from the beta, I remembered the name. He led one of the floor boss raids and also a couple dungeon raids.

"Hello. I'm the one who called this meeting. My name is Diabel and my class is Knight."

He is met with laughter and some people calling things along the lines of 'there are no classes in SAO.'

His icebreaker certainly worked.

"Alright alright, quiet down! Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?" he yells and everyone quiets down.

"Yesterday, my party and I found the boss room!" he says.

There were mutterings among the various groups.

Technically, Tazen and I had found it before him, but we didn't want to deal with leading a raid or organizing a meeting, so we decided to wait a couple days.

"Now, before we discuss strategy, I'd like everyone to party up," he says.

"Now wait a moment! Before we go further, there's something I'd like to get off my chest!" some brown cactus who jumps down into the amphitheater a few steps at a time says.

"You are?" Diabel asks.

"Name's Kibaou. Now, there are some people here who need to apologize to the 2000 people who've died so far!" he yells.

Me personally. But I'm sure he's talking about beta testers in general.

"Kibaou, do you mean the beta testers?" Diabel asks carefully.

"That's right! When this game started, the beta testers just ditched us new players and took all the easy quests and good grinding spots. They should get down on their knees and apologize. AND give up all the items and Col they stole."

A tall African-American man stands up and walks towards Kibaou.

"Name's Agil. Now Kibaou, you're saying that since the beta testers didn't protect the new players they're responsible for their deaths and they should give up their items and money in atonement?"

"Y-yes," Kibaou stutters at the man looming above him.

Agil pulls out a booklet I immediately recognize as the Guide Book, distributed by Argo the Rat. A beta tester info dealer who played as a man in the beta test despite being a girl, much like me, though we also both knew the other was actually a girl. Me because I bought it from her and she because she bought it from me. Technically, that is. Practically speaking, we just traded the information.

"Do you know what this is?" he asks.

"It's the guide book. It's available from every general store from free. How is this relevant?" he says, gaining back some confidence.

"This book contains extremely detailed information on a wide variety of topics, including quests, grinding spots, combat, sword skills, skill descriptions, and any number of other useful things. Do you really think Kayaba would just provide us with this information for free? Of course not. This booklet is a compilation of the beta testers' knowledge. You can see the author of each section too. The beta tester who wrote the combat section, sword skills section, skill descriptions section, and most of the other game mechanics sections is here, for example. Those people had all this information that the beta testers have and they still died, I thought the point of this was to learn from their mistakes and beat the game, not fight amongst ourselves," Agil says and glances at me.

Damnit, Argo!

After that, Kibaou backs down and the rest of the meeting continues smoothly, with Tazen and I partying with the fencer, who had survived the few days and found out about the meeting and turned out to be named Asuna. Somebody shows up with an updated version of the booklet which contains the info on the beta version of the boss.

* * *

After Diabel gives his encouragement speech which I completely tune out, we move into the boss fight and Diabel gives his orders, which for us means fighting the minions that show up.

"You two, stick together and cover each others' backs," I say.

"And you?" Asuna asks.

"She'll be fine," Tazen says.

I split off from the two and go after the nearest [Ruin Kobold Sentinal], abusing the broken (though when I complained about it I was told that it was only broken in _my_ hands and was actually a balanced skill and that _anything_ could be overpowered in my hands, including a wooden spoon (true story)) skill that is [Parry] to stun it by getting a [Perfect Parry] on its attack, allowing me to drive my sword through its throat where there was a gap between breastplate and helmet.

As it shatters, I move onto the next one and repeat the process, continuing until all of them were dead, killed either by me or one of the two other groups killing them, namely, Kibaou's group and Tazen and Asuna.

A short while later more spawn and they are also dealt with.

As the boss hits 25% on its last HP bar and throws aside its shield and ax.

"Stand back! I got this!" Diabel yells.

I sigh and press my hands to my face. What an idiot.

As I look up towards the boss again I realize something fairly major. It wasn't using a tulwar like in the beta, and thus, guide book. It was using an oversized nodachi, a type of long katana which was used in the real world by mounted troops.

Which meant its patterns would be _entirely_ different.

"Diabel get back!" I call. Frankly, I didn't care if he died through his own stupidity and greed. Care _much_. I did care enough to put in the effort of yelling.

"You just want the loot. It belongs to Diabel" Kibaou calls. I ignore him. He should be grateful I'm putting in _any_ effort to save his dumbass friend. Dumbass _beta tester_ friend who has plenty enough information to realize he was running to his likely death.

"That's a nodachi, not a tulwar. It's changed from the beta!" I yell.

He processes what I said just in time to be surprised before Illfang starts his skill. The massive creature moves with surprising agility.

You know. If I save his life, I get the LAB. And I'll probably have to kill the boss after he dies anyway. I think I remember something about being in charge if he dies. Scumbag.

I close my eyes for what feels like a few long seconds, though to everybody else or a clock it would be a small fraction of a second. I enter a state of calm. Actually, calm is a bad word for this. I was already perfectly calm. Stillness would be better. "In the midst of movement and chaos keep stillness inside of you." This completely through away everything but rational thought. Instincts and impulses continue to function at normal speeds, allowing me to think faster than them and potentially suppress them.

As I open my eyes, the world is tinted grey, an odd side effect of ability. Aside from that, the world is also extremely slow. In the physical world, this manifests itself as an inhumanly fast reaction speed, inhumanly fast—even beyond my normal inhuman speed of thought—speed of thought, and the ability to push my muscles beyond normal limits, like with adrenaline. **(This may or may not be how biology/anatomy. I don't care because I do not _know_ biology/anatomy well enough to care.)**

In the virtual world, the first two stayed the same, but the same speed up was applied directly to my movement.

Illfang floated in midair, practically frozen still, as was everything else.

I kick off the ground and cross the distance of 10 meters in what to everyone else would be a tiny fraction of a second and to me... was a not as tiny fraction of a second, I suppose. I swing my sword and [Perfect Parry] Illfang's [Sword Skill], knocking it up and canceling the skill. I cut across across his stomach before allowing time to return to normal speed.

It was mentally _very_ exhausting to do this, especially for prolonged periods. And while it only set in after a short while, I knew it would so I tended to minimize the use. Basically I would have a head ache and be tired and... basically it's like not sleeping for a long time. Something like a day for every 30 seconds from my perspective of use, I suppose. Using it for 2-3 minutes would probably kill me. I wasn't interested in finding out. Maybe it wouldn't because while the effects are similar, it is not actually lack of sleep. As I said, not interested in finding out. If I pushed it far enough—as I just did—every _second_ became what feels like many hours of not sleeping.

Or telling anyone about the ability really. Let them think what they want. There were two other people who knew. One was Argo, the other, however, I'm not sure whether I regret telling them or not. Maybe it's paranoia from watching too many supernatural powers anime (where the people with superpowers become lab rats), but I didn't really want scientists or anyone asking about it.

As the boss activates another skill, aimed at me this time, I jump into the air, twisting between the repeated blows as the boss spins in circle since I already knew the skill and exactly where his sword would be. He unleashes another skill as I land on the ground and I step, twist, lean, and otherwise dodge or parry all the strikes with practiced ease.

As the skill finishes I use the PMD to pass through his guard and my sword glows crimson as I activate [Tripuncture], a skill which consists of three fast stabs in an equilateral triangle, available for any one handed and relatively straight sword. The three stabs all pierce into the beasts stomach, taking large chunks out of his HP.

I jump back, out of immediate range of Illfang before my PMD activates, holding me still for half a second.

He reaches me as it wears off and activates a purple sword skill I recognize as a single, diagonal slash which was incredibly powerful and fast.

Unfortunately, hitting me with something like that was impossible.

It freezes in PMD as the skill finishes. Enemies had PMD too, and while for bosses it was reduced, it was still there. And the skill it just used was the sort of trump skill which tends to end the battle one way or the way, either killing your opponent or allowing them to likely kill you in your PMD. In this case it was the latter.

I run up to the frozen boss and cut my sword from its right hip to its left shoulder, flinging it and making it shatter. My own HP had taken the tiniest scratch from the parries. And the LAB I get is a badass coat.

Everyone stares at me in amazement. I know that my sword had been supersonic because I could actually see the distortion due to pressure wave. Oh sure it was fast, but not impossible to notice.

I sigh as people start cheering.

"That was cool," Tazen says.

"I'm going to go activate the teleporter on the second floor. Don't come with me, in the beta it happened all too many times that players would beat the boss only to be killed by the new monsters on the next floor before making it to the town," I say.

"Alright," he says.

Perfect, now before I do that, I can take a nap. It used to fuck with my sleep schedule, but it doesn't really exist anymore. I just go to bed whenever I want and wake up whenever I want.

"Stop cheering!" Kibaou calls.

I say, "What now?" not bothering to keep the sleepiness out of my voice and off my face.

"You stole the [Last Attack Bonus] and now you're just going to walk away?" he asks.

"Stole it?" I ask.

"Diabel earned that, finding the boss fight and leading the raid and then you just steal it!"

I sigh.

"How did she know all the boss patterns?"

"I bet she's a beta tester."

"She and all her kind are just greedy bastards. She was just waiting for an opportunity to steal the LAB this whole fight."

"You knew all the boss's patterns but you beta testers put some random crap in that damn booklet of yours because you wanted to get the LAB yourself."

Argo, you better thank me for this.

I start laughing. Mocking laughter. I stand up and face them.

"What? Why are you laughing." I ignore him in favor of rubbing my eyes.

"What? Are trying to escape by looking cute or something?" If I was, it would work. Believe it or not, I am capable of acting cute.

"Huh? Oh no that's not it, I just realized I didn't get nearly enough sleep to deal with idiots like you lot," I say. My plan did not involve escaping them hating me... it was the exact opposite. Which is why I was acting even more condescending than usual.

"So you guys think I'm a beta tester? Please, don't lump me in with those noobs. Most of them were so green they didn't even know how to level up. Hell, _you_ idiots are better than they were. But me? I made it to higher floors than anyone else. I know more than any info broker. I knew Illfang's patterns because I had fought dangerous monsters on higher floors which had katana skills."

"I-if that's the case, you're worse than a beta tester! You're a cheater! A goddamn cheater! That's what you are!" somebody yells. What an idiot. Even if I am a cheater, I'm on your side and you have no interest in beating the game fairly, so that I'm a cheater would be a good thing.

"A beta tester and a cheater! A beater! She's a beater!" Whoever said it gets a chorus of agreement.

"Beater... hmm... I like it. Yeah, I'm a beater," I say and equip the LAB, turning around and walking away in the most badass way possible.

Nobody follows me, which is good because the aftereffects were kinda getting to me. Just a little. Not really, it was actually quite a lot.

I walk out of the boss room and into the sunlight of the second floor. I stop a little ways.

I hear two sets of footsteps behind me. The quiet, relatively familiar steps of Tazen and the louder, though still elegant, footsteps of Asuna. "I thought I told you not to follow me."

"I know you weren't serious," Asuna says.

"Almost everything I said was the truth."

"Except beta testers being noobs. The beta test entry was a lottery but tickets were gotten through various gaming events," Tazen says.

"Compared to me they were," I say.

"Seeing as you single-handedly wiped the floor with a floor boss's more difficult phase, I can believe that."

"Anyway. You two should stay away from me, if somebody invites you to a guild you should join. There's only far being solo will take you," Kiriko says.

"You're solo. I asked Argo about it, you were one of the extremely few beta players who stayed solo till the very end."

"I'm an exception, Asuna. I actually do know more about mechanics and combat than any info broker and as you just saw, I can kill pretty much anything."

"How do you know my name?" Asuna asks.

"If you look to the upper right, with your eyes, not your head, you'll see our names and HP bars under yours," I say.

"Now go back before you get yourself killed," I say.

"Kiriko, can I talk to you in private for a moment?" Tazen asks.

"Make it quick then," I say as Asuna leaves.

"I know for a fact you got plenty of sleep," he says.

"I was faking it to act more condescending," I lie.

"You might be good at hiding what you're feeling, but I'm pretty good at reading people, and I can tell you weren't faking it. The fact that I can tell that when its you means you're probably about ready to collapse from exhaustion."

Damn right I am, so fuck off.

"Suppose you're right. So what?"

"It has to do with how you briefly moved at supersonic speed, doesn't it?" he says.

Annoyingly perceptive.

I look at him with a look that says, "And?"

"What did you do?"

"Nothing," I lie. It should convey the fact that I wasn't willing to talk about it.

"Fine, if you don't want to talk I'll go and leave you to your nap or whatever it is you planned to do," he says and leaves.

I leap up onto some high boulders where the particular type of enemy that existed in this area would be unable to reach me and lay down. I close my eyes.

* * *

After an hour or so, I wake up. It wasn't nearly enough, but it would be good enough to go activate the teleporter and _then_ sleep for a few hours.

I jog along the path, cutting down a few [Trembling Oxen] along the way. I reach the town and activate the teleporter before leaping onto a nearby roof and hiding there. People flood out.

I close my eyes and lay back on the roof, hidden from sight, once more falling asleep.

* * *

I wake up to the sounds of conflict, though not combat, and the relatively familiar voice of a certain Rat.

I groan and get up, walking to the edge of the roof and jumping down onto the road between Argo and some assailants.

"You jackasses woke me up," I grumble.

"Hey Kiriko," Argo says.

"What's going on?"

"They want me to tell them where to find the quest for the [Martial Arts] quest, but I refuse to be responsible for the consequences."

"You know, I'd just let them go fail. It's their problem, not yours, but whatever."

"You Fuuma-somethings better leave before I make you," I say to them.

"It's Fuumaningun!" one of them yells.

"Good for you, now fuck off."

They draw their scimitars, completely useless in the town, and advance, saying, "Why don't you keep your nose out of other people's business?"

"See... there's the problem. You're bothering my friend. If she doesn't want to sell you the information, she doesn't have to. Now if you don't mind your own business, we'll be testing the limits of the [Safe Zone] protection," I say.

The two charge and I beat the crap out of them without ever drawing my sword. Since this was a [Safe Zone], I could easily knock aside their weapons with my hands... or not at all. They were completely speed built and so their blows didn't carry enough force to knock me off my feet or anything of the sort.

Soon they run off and Argo says, "Thanks Kiriko, I was really backed into a corner there."

"Anytime Argo. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a nap to get back to," I say.

"You had to use _that_?" she asks.

"Diabel was stupid and greedy," I say simply.

"And you actually went though the trouble of saving him?"

"I figured I'd have to kill the boss anyway if I wanted the LAB, which I did. And if I'm going to do it anyway, I care enough about his life to do it before it kills him rather than after," I say.

"Always making up excuses for being heroic..." Argo mutters.

"Hey! There generally _is_ a very much practical reason to save somebody's life, or at least do something from which only a small amount of effort is required to save somebody's life," I object.

"You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better... because considering yourself to be heartless and cold makes you feel better, apparently. Somehow though, you end up saving anybody you run into who's in trouble and then rationalizing it away."

"Technically, I rationalize it away _first_ , which is called _reasoning_."

"No. You make the decision and _then_ come up with the reason, which is called _rationalizing_ ," Argo says.

"I do _not_ ," I say.

"Whatever you say, princess," Argo says.

* * *

 **I was tempted to switch to** **third person to keep Kiriko more mysterious, but in the end, by the time I thought that, I had already written the entire chapter and I was like 'screw this, I write for fun and rewriting 4k words isn't'.**

 **Either way, thanks for reading, please follow, favorite, and leave a review telling me what you though! Unless what you thought is that Kiriko is too OP, in which case, I say to you, 'in this case, there is no such thing as too OP.'**


	3. Chapter 3

**By the way, the thing with Argo calling Kiriko princess at the end of the last chapter was not actually meant to be related to the story's name and I only noticed that AFTER I wrote it.**

 **Originally, I planned to keep a few things about Kiriko secret from the reader, but I kinda changed my mind when I realized that'll hardly be possible writing in first person. So the new plan is that it'll be revealed whenever it comes up.**

* * *

"Hey Kiriko, haven't seen you in a bit," Agil calls as he approaches me. I had run into his party while grinding near the labyrinth.

"It's been literally 2 days," I deadpan as he comes into normal speaking range. The rest of his party were wary of me, perhaps due to my wonderful speech after the first boss.

"Feels like it's been longer," he says.

"Do you have any idea when we'll be fighting the field boss? I haven't been to town since I unlocked the teleporter," I say.

"I think Diabel has called a meeting in a couple hours. He was wondering if you would show up," Agil says.

"I'll pass."

"I see. I guess I'll tell him that. You said you haven't been to town since you unlocked the teleporter, right? Don't tell you've been sleeping outside of safe zones?"

"There are places you can buy or rent which are safe zones outside of town," I answer. Technically, they are 'protected zones' which are different from safe zones. A safe zone does not allow the HP of players inside to drop unless they are in a duel, in which case they can take damage from their opponent (but not other players) and certain types of environmental damage (i.e. fall damage) to them. A protected zone does not allow monsters to enter or detect you (as such, they also won't use any form of long range attack).

"Good to know. So Kiriko, our party is one member short of the technical limit for parties, so would you like to join us until we head back to town?" Agil offers.

I consider the offer. On the minus side, I have to spend time around Agil's party members, and I have to share the XP and items I may get. The latter problem was relatively insignificant as I was high enough level that the XP from the monsters we would be fighting was trivial and I had an overabundance of the items anyway. They are also likely to trigger traps or engage inefficiently. On the plus side... uh... I suppose there would be somebody to drag me back if I passed out from being forced to use my ability too much, something that in itself is far more likely if there are other people around, both because more people equals more monsters and also because they would be more likely to spring traps. Also on the plus side, I'd get to chat a bit with Agil, which was surprisingly enjoyable. And I could probably find out how Tazen and Asuna were doing from him. Ah screw it, I can always leave.

"I'll tag along, but I might leave before you go back," I say.

"Great."

* * *

A little past midday the next day, when I guessed the raid party would try to kill the field boss guarding the second floor labyrinth, the [Bullbous Bow], I decided to go to where it was.

If they don't show up, I'll just kill it myself.

They do, however, show up, only shortly after I do.

"Kiriko!" Tazen calls out as the person to notice me... despite me standing in broad daylight and him not being at the front. Well, technically, I was standing in the shade, but that's not the point.

"Hello," I say.

* * *

For a while, the fight went fine for the clearers while I watched—and killed any wind wasps that happened my way. Unsurprisingly though, once the boss got low, Diabel's, Kibaou's, and Lind's parties all started fighting more against each other for the LAB than they were fighting the boss. It didn't matter though, because none of them were getting it anyway.

As the boss gets into the red on its final bar, I get ready to jump off the ruin pillar I was perched on to kill it.

I close my eyes, preparing to enter my accelerated state in order to kill it in a short time—not a strictly needed action, but it was easier that way, however, before I do, I hear a crash and open my eyes again.

One of the people had gotten hit and had been flung back into his party, toppling several over players, Lind included.

I close my eyes once more and then there was stillness.

I open my eyes and the world was once more tinted grey... and much slower than before.

I sleep from the pillar, covering the distance to the boss in a fraction of a second in normal time and strike it on the nose with a [Martial Arts] skill with my left hand as well as stabbing my sword up through that bottom of its head. As I allow time to return to normal, I realize that the first of those actions was entirely pointless when the boss shatters.

"If you're going to be greedy, at least be smart about it, you idiots," I say just loud enough for them to hear before walking away from the mess of people and into the labyrinth.

* * *

The second boss fight went well. Until the third boss showed up, that is. After that, it went _great_... What? It was fun. Isn't that the point of video games and bosses? Well, it was probably fun mostly for me.

* * *

As the third boss—which wasn't in the game before—slowly starts appearing Agil—whose party I was working on killing the weaker boss with—says, "That's not good. That's very not good."

"Just finish off this boss. I'll go deal with that thing," I say. I wasn't sure if I could kill it completely on my own, but I could certainly delay it for a while. Maybe Asuna and Tazen—who were getting the [Martial Arts] skill—would show up. The other people were mostly incompetent.

"How do you plan to do that?"

"Well..." I look up the height of the boss materializing in gold particles. I could easily get that high up one of the pillars in the room. If I could get on his head from there, I would just need to hold on and the boss was as good as dead. Now, there were two 'maybes' in that plan. Getting on his head and staying on his head. The first one should be easy enough and the second should be doable.

I leap up as high can up the pillar, roughly half the height I need, and bury my left hand into the pillar. Now not bare hand, though that would be doable with the right [Martial Arts] skills. I was wearing a clawed light gauntlet on my hand, which was probably 'designed' (since it didn't actually have a human designer) to be used for both clawing and punching.

The game only allowed equipping of one weapon normally, however, small enough weapons (claws, daggers, etc.) could be dual-wielded, or even equipped as off-hand weapons while equipping a full-sized weapon for the other. I didn't use a dagger in my off-hand because I grabbed my sword with both hands reasonably often and a dagger or most claws would make that more difficult, however this 'claw' was more of gauntlet with pointed fingers which made it still easily possible to grab my sword with it. Somewhat less convenient than barehanded—which is why I only wore the left-handed gauntlet, despite a having one for my right hand as well—but the increased defense and punching power more than made up for the minor losses in offense and defense from being unable to two-hand my sword quite as well.

My shoes—not same set or anything, just independently—had firm enough tips that I was also able to kick my feet into the pillar with the superhuman strength of game avatars. As a result, I am able to make nice handholds in the pillar. And then I use this to jump up again to the height I wanted.

I don't bury my feet in this time and only dig in my hand in such a way that it can support weight outwards as well as down, then hang off that hold and stand against the wall as I face away and wait for the boss to finish spawning.

From my vantage point, I can easily see Agil and his party finish off the last of [Nato the Colonel Taurus's] HP and look up at me.

"Just go speed up the killing of Baron!" I yell to them.

And just as they reach [Baron the General Taurus], the third boss finishes appearing. 6 HP bars appear and above them, the name [Asterius the Taurus King].

Well, time to have some fun.

I'm sure if somebody could hear my thoughts, they would say something along the lines of, "you have an odd definition of 'fun'."

Which may be true since I was about to single-handedly fight an enemy which was designed to be fought with 5-8 full parties in a game where death meant death in the real world.

He has a hammer similar to the other two, so he'll probably have some similar moves, and the crown is likely a weak spot.

He starts moving towards Baran and the rest of the raid party. While still a ways away, he stops. His eyes glow and he leans back, drawing a breath that makes lightning sparkle from his nostrils and makes his chest bulg.

I sheathe my sword and throw a throwing dagger at his crown. He staggers, canceling the attack, and then turns towards me. Weak spot indeed, and I've got his attention now.

He charges at me and swings his hammer horizontally. Just as it is about to hit—and likely smash—the pillar, I jump off the pillar and onto a different one.

It smashes the pillar into rock debris and he turns to me. He swings again and this time, I jump towards him instead, striking his crown with a [Martial Arts] skill which works especially well when you're in the air and moving towards the opponent and causing him to stagger and fall to a knee.

I grab onto one of his horns with my right hand and swing around it to land on the top of his head.

And then I just start repeatedly punching the crown until he topples over completely.

That was surprisingly effective.

I let go and draw my sword and hold it in reverse grip. I grab it with my second hand and plunge down into the back of his neck, causing his HP to drop sharply. Well... this might be really easy.

I repeat several times and as the boss starts to stand again, I just punch him a few times in the crown. I hear Baran shatter.

* * *

The rest of the fight goes trivially. Asuna, Tazen, and Argo arrive with information about Asterius from side quests a short while after he appears, only to find that he was completely helpless anyway.

When he got to rampage mode once he hits red on his last bar, he does manage to get up because he sharply stands up, ignoring my several attacks on his crown. I jumped off before I got flung off due to his violent motion, sliding down a pillar superhero style. Or I tried, but it turns out you need to be much heavier to tear through stone with nothing but your weight, so I jumped down instead. It works for hulk and glass buildings, not so much for teenage girls and stone pillars.

Still, rampage or not, there were breaks in his motion and during that time we all rushed in and attacked him. I got the final hit. And did probably over half the damage. Stun lock abuse for the win.

* * *

I check the LAB as I walk out of the boss room and up to the next floor. The name is [Asterius's Hammer].

Guess I'll just sell it to some hammer user because I have literally no use for it.

I hear somebody come up the stairs behind me. Asuna, Tazen, and Argo.

"That was pretty badass," Tazen says.

"You weren't even there for the badass part. All you saw was me standing on him and repeatedly stabbing him."

"Agil told us," he answers.

"Either way, Imma get going and unlock the teleporter. See you later, I suppose."

"We'll come along."

"Whatever. If you get killed, I'm not taking responsibility."

"You tell yourself whatever makes you feel better, but I know you wouldn't actually let any of us die," Argo teases.

"You wanna test that theory?" I ask.

"Not particularly. I have no interest in letting some stupid monster from floor 3 beat me."

"Suit yourself."

"So Kiriko... why didn't you warn us about the [Martial Arts] quest?" Asuna says in a sweet voice.

"What about it?" I ask.

"It took us 3 days! _3 days_ of camping there to do it! I got dirt... dirt and dust _everywhere_!"

"Dunno what you're on about. It took me 5 minutes."

"How the hell did you do it in 5 minutes?!" Asuna exclaims.

"She has a knack for finding weak spots and using them to break things. Weapons, armor... giant boulders. She also hits really, really hard," Argo says.

"And you didn't hurt your hands hitting a fucking rock really hard?" Asuna asks me.

"There's barely any pain in SAO. And in the end, I know that regardless of what damage I manage to inflict on myself, I can just use a crystal or wait 10 minutes."

"So? Pain is still pain, even if the damage isn't permanent. Or are you telling me that you can just ignore any amount of pain?" Asuna asks.

"As a matter of fact, yes. Yes I can," I say.

"Right..."

* * *

 **April Fools!**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **...**

 **Now... you may be thinking, "Where's the fools part."**

 **And in that case my answers is, "Got you," because the April Fools part was saying that this was April Fools.**

 **Okay, that aside, sorry for the slightly shorter chapter. I just felt like it would need to be much longer before I reached a reasonable stopping point.**

 **Please follow and review!**


	4. Chapter 4

**This chapter is more about people other than Kiriko, so it might be a little short.**

 **And since none of them are the main character or anything, I'm writing this in third person.**

 **I figure that since this is part of the reason this story took so long, I might as well tell you. If you like dark stories which earn their M rating through gore, you should check out an author named** _metaldragon868_ **. He has a really long and amazing RWBY fanfic (which is how I found him), a great Harry Potter fic (which doesn't have much to do with the canon, at least yet (only 4 chapters in)), a Frozen fic (which is also still in its tryout period and is also really dark), a Legend of Korra fic (which I haven't yet read but I'll probably enjoy), and a Percy Jackson and Destiny crossover (it has also just started), which is much less dark (so far) and is amazing fun despite not knowing the canon for EITHER story.**

 **Even if you don't like the originals of those (for me, I disliked Frozen and didn't much care for Harry Potter and yet I like the fics), I suggest you read them if you like dark stories. Especially Madness of Death (the RWBY one). 300k words of gory awesomeness (the gore isn't what makes it good, but if you don't like gore _STAY AWAY_ ).**

* * *

Asuna and Tazen were walking through the labyrinth of floor 23, a place filled with... snake people... also known as nagas. Or in this case, they were called Vipers. Their bodies were covered entirely in green scales, but their top half was approximately humanoid while there bottom half was a snake.

They were armed with a variety of weapons, including spears, swords, axes, and even just using their claws. They had the nasty ability to spit toxic globs which have a nasty habit of creeping through any holes in your gear and poison you if too much touches your skin for too long. They could also spit similar globs which would explode into a toxic cloud which also poisons you after a brief time of breathing it, but the poison is much less severe. They could also coil around somebody with their snake half in order to immobilize them, but it was not too difficult to prevent that from happening to you.

As they round a corner they see a faint shimmer in the air separating them from a large open room. Inside was a large Viper.

"This must be one of the boss barriers that Kiriko mentioned," Tazen says. The shimmering wall was a type of barrier that appeared in dungeons when you had a miniboss. Instead of having a boss gate like dungeon bosses tended to have or just not really straying too far from a point—either due to tendencies or natural barriers—like a field boss, these bosses were walled in by barely visible barriers which would disappear once the boss dies.

In truth though, they function much like an open boss gate.

"Which makes that big monster a miniboss," Asuna says.

They could see the monster, but since there was nobody inside its domain, it was inactive and as such it did not have HP bars or a name visible.

"Think we can take it?" Asuna asks.

"Well, minibosses are generally designed for a single party, so we should be fine. We can always run or teleport away if needed," Tazen says.

"You have antidote potions and crystals ready, right?" Asuna asks.

"Yep. Plenty of potions and a crystal at the ready. You?" Tazen confirms.

She checks. "Me too. Let's kick some ass!"

"Do snakes even have asses?" Tazen asks.

Asuna glares at him.

Tazen glares meets her glare.

A few seconds later, the two start laughing.

"Let's go," Asuna says.

"Yes, let's."

The two enter the area and two HP bars appear next to the boss, along with the name [Viper Royal Guardian].

The viper wore gilded gauntlets and a breastplate which didn't go past where the rips would be on a human so as to not limit mobility. The primary material of both appeared to be the same fairly mundane, silvery metal as the other vipers. In its hands was a long halberd. The base material of it all was the same metal and the handle and blade were both gilded with intricate designs, however, the edge of the blade was a brilliant, shiny green.

"Great. It has a long reach melee weapon and several different ways to attack at a distance. If I were it, I would just keep spitting at us and if either of us got close, I would swing the halberd and use my speed and agility to move away," Tazen says.

"Though it's slowly been getting smarter, the AI is pretty stupid," Asuna says.

"It's not capable of adapting and can be played, but its basic strategy is generally fine," Tazen says.

"Still, if that _is_ it's strategy, it will only slowly whittle us down and if we get too low, we can just teleport out," he adds.

As they take a few more steps in, it turns to them and hisses, twirling it's halberd.

It lungs forward, stabbing at Tazen, who moves to the side and deflects the attack with his dagger, moving forward past its guard and activates [Biter], a 6-hit dagger sword skill consisting of three slightly downwards stabs in a row and three slightly upwards stabs in a row below the first. Each hit doesn't do much damage but the skill inflicts bleed DOT and the overall damage is good.

The skill does roughly 10% of its first bar. The bleed effect of skill does the initial damage every minute (though smoothly) until it is healed in some way, which in the cases of some monsters just doesn't happen and for other monsters it could be quick. Against a player, they have any number of options for healing it, including just waiting.

Asuna then follows him, leaping at the boss with a [Linear]. The boss moves back and out of reach of the skill, but as a result is unable to counterattack against Tazen as his PMD wore off, which was Asuna's goal.

Both of them jump back as the viper spits several globs at them. Instead of just turning into harmless goop on the ground and then shattering like the normal vipers' spit, this spit starts to boil, evaporating quickly into the toxic gas the normal vipers could breathe out, slowly floating away.

"That's annoying," Tazen comments.

"Agreed," Asuna says.

"Really wish decent ranged weapons were available to the players for this kind of situation," Asuna says.

"It _is_ called _Sword_ Art Online," Tazen points out.

"And you're using a dagger fighting an enemy using a halberd. A bow or crossbow would fit fine," Asuna says.

"Maybe, but this is how Kayaba made the game and we're just gonna have to deal with it. Let's start by killing this boss..."

* * *

Something which turned out easier said than done. The boss behaved as Tazen had predicted and they didn't really have any way to consistently hit it. Meanwhile, it kept getting them in poison gas, which slowly but steadily whittled away their HP and it looked like this time, slow and steady would win the race. While they wouldn't actually die at this rate, just teleport out, their pride would be _really_ hurt and so they refused to teleport even as they both got to around 50% HP. While they still had some potions left, there were limits to pulling stuff out of your inventory in combat, so even though they had tons of potions in their inventory, most of them weren't available.

After Tazen's first hit, they hadn't done very much damage at all and the HP of the miniboss sat firmly at 65% of its first bar. And they had already used all their cure potions (they didn't bother wasting their crystals) and a good portion of their HP potions. As the boss filled the air with the gas, it not only poisoned the players but also made it much more difficult to hit the boss since they couldn't see it probably and it could easily see them, somehow.

"I think we should probably back out soon. As much as it hurts my pride to admit it, we're just wasting potions and time and not making much progress," Tazen says.

"This would be much easier with a couple more people since it wouldn't be able to keep everyone away with its halberd," Asuna says.

"Unfortunately, we don't have a couple more people," Tazen says. As he says this, they hear somebody's voice saying, "Commander! There's a miniboss fight. Looks like someone's already fighting it though."

They then hear a somewhat familiar voice call to them through the toxic fog, "Do you need any help?"

"We would appreciate it!" Asuna calls back. The two move towards the entrance and see a party of the KOB, a guild which showed up as just a single party at the 10th boss fight. Since then, they had grown to strongest guild, though the ALA (run by Kibaou) and the DDA (run by Lind and Diabel) both objected to that statement. Their leader, Heathcliff, was an incredibly powerful player. Over the past 13 floors, some people had started considering him on Kiriko's level, or at least close to it. Asuna and Tazen, who better knew how strong Kiriko was, didn't agree, but they did agree he was incredibly powerful. Almost certainly stronger than them.

"Hello Heathcliff," Asuna says.

"Hello. You two seem to be having a bit of trouble, is it strong?"

"Not so much 'strong' as incredibly fucking annoying. Fills the room with poison smoke and uses that to hide itself while slowly killing its enemies. Add to that moving incredibly quickly and being equipped with a long reach halberd and it's an incredibly pain. Though with a few more people, we should be able to get it no problem," Tazen summarizes.

"Where is it now?"

"Probably keeping its distance, as usual, and waiting for us to slowly die or flee," Tazen says, "So on the opposite side of the room."

From there the fight goes quickly since Heathcliff is easily able to back it against a wall by steadily advancing while blocking its strikes. Then Asuna, Tazen, and Heathcliff's party moved in from the sides and tore it up while it couldn't go anywhere. Once it shatter, the smoke cleared immediately.

Heathcliff, who had gotten the boss's halberd as a LAB, tosses it to Tazen and Asuna.

"You found the boss first and devised a strategy to kill it, you can have the LAB."

"Thank you for your help," Asuna says.

"The pleasure is all mine. I was actually looking for the two of you. I have an offer," Heathcliff says.

"An offer?"

"Yes. I would like you, either or both of you, to join my guild, the Knights of the Blood. Naturally, since both of you are strong, intelligent, and in at least one of your cases, popular, you will immediately receive high ranks," he says.

Asuna and Tazen look between each other before Tazen says, "We'll need to think about it."

"Take your time. Add me to your friend list so you can message me once you come to a decision," Heathcliff says, sending them friend requests.

"In the meantime, do you know where Kiriko is?" Heathcliff is.

"Haven't seen her outside of boss fights in a couple weeks and she's turned off the friend location feature. It seems she doesn't want to be found. And since she's perfectly fine spending days without visiting town and weeks without interacting with people, finding her would be incredibly difficult," Tazen answers.

"I see. I'll have to wait till the next boss fight then," Heathcliff says.

"If you do find her, be sure to let us know," Asuna says.

"Alright. Would you like to continue with us, perhaps as a trial period, or go your own way?" Heathcliff asks.

"Actually, we're probably going to head back since we exhausted a bunch of our supplies, and ourselves, on that fight," Tazen says and Asuna nods.

"I see. In that case, message me once you come to a decision," Heathcliff says.

* * *

Back in town, the two sit at a cafe to eat lunch after restocking their potions and other supplies.

"So, what should we do about Heathcliff's other," Tazen asks.

"I say we accept," Asuna says.

"Hmm?"

"Well, first, there's the advice Kiriko gave us after the first boss, remember? To join a guild. And second, that fight just showed us how two people is hardly enough sometimes. If Heathcliff hadn't shown up, we wouldn't have won that fight, so we were effectively one anti-crystal trap away from dying there. And that's not the first close call we've had. In general, we'd be safer with a party of other strong players," Asuna says.

"I don't really play well with others," Tazen points out.

"Really? I didn't notice," Asuna deadpans.

"I get along with Kiriko because she's a calm, collected, and intelligent psychopath who can put on whatever mask feels appropriate and be ruthlessly efficient, but I don't really get along with normal people."

"I'm pretty normal."

"The fact that you tolerate me says otherwise," Tazen says.

"You seem to do fine with Heathcliff," Asuna points out.

"I think that Heathcliff is like Kiriko, just puts on the mask of charismatic and kind leader instead of just hiding emotion, aside from occasional displays of apparent happiness," Tazen says.

"Well, if he is, he's got me fooled," Asuna says.

"That aside, even if I get along with Heathcliff, I can't really be a member of a guild or party if can't get along with its members," Tazen says.

"How about this, let's tell Heathcliff we'll give it a try for a while and if we like it, we'll stay?" Asuna suggests.

"I'm fine with that."

"By the way Tazen. If you want to leave, _we_ 'll leave. I'm not going to join without you," Asuna adds.

"That's nice to know," Tazen says.

* * *

 **As I said, a bit shorter. Still, I think it didn't take as long as the previous one, so that's a plus.**

 **Please follow, favorite, and review!**


	5. Chapter 5

**I intend to probably change my username in the near future, mostly because I intend to post some content I would rather certain people (aka family, and generally anyone I know in real life) who know my current username not read. I intend to keep my stories T-rated (likely too high a rating) and post the other content in separate stories.**

 **The lack of updates is addressed in the bottom author's note.**

* * *

"Kiriko!" Heathcliff calls out as I start to leave the boss room after the 23rd boss shatters by my blade.

"What?" I ask as I turn to him.

"I have an offer," he says.

"I'm not joining your guild," I say and then add, "In case that's what were intending to 'offer'."

"Even though Asuna and Tazen have joined?"

"My answer doesn't change."

"I see. In that case, I will see you at the next raid. Can we add each other as friends in case either of us needs something from the other?"

"Sure," I answer. You could toggle location display for individual friends as well as in general, and even mute people (because even if they're your friends, sometimes you don't want to talk to them), so there wasn't really any harm in it.

* * *

As I wander through the labyrinth of the 24th floor, I can hear fighting.

Deciding that I have nothing better to do, I walk through the halls of the labyrinth towards the sound. Though it was called a labyrinth, and somewhat was, navigation by sounds was easy for two reasons. The first is that if a path went some way, it likely took you that way for a decent length. And the second, more relevant thing, was that with the closed halls and thick walls, the only way for sound to travel was through the tunnels. In other words, when following the sounds, you were following the path the sound took to get to you rather than the straight-line path towards the event.

The sounds were coming from a large open room swarming with what seemed to be a weaker version of this dungeon's monsters. Janky, steampunk-style robots with random bits and pieces sticking out of them. They were a surprisingly difficult for most people who used bladed weapons since they were made of metal, and while strong blows had a tendency to knock them to pieces, blades had trouble cutting through them.

For me and other more skilled players, however, it was easy enough to hit their various surprisingly soft weak points. For example their throat.

In the center of the room were a pair of players, fighting off the hoard.

 _Dumbasses. Most of the traps are pretty obvious if you've ever played a video game before._

I glance to see if I know the players and find that it is, in fact, Asuna and Tazen.

 _Okay, maybe it was one of the less obvious traps. I guess I'll help them..._

 _Why did I decide that? There is no real good reason to help them._

 _Except that you actually do care if they die._

 _Shut up, internal dialogue voice in my head._

 _No._

I sigh and close my eyes, opening them to a greyish and slow world.

I move at all the speed I can muster, cutting through the weak points of the enemies as I practically fly past them and clearing out a large swath of them as I come to a stop next to Tazen and Asuna, allowing time to return to normal.

"Come on, let's go," I say. I was, now, in a hurry to get out of here because I had spent close to 10 seconds in my accelerated state and at that acceleration, once it hit, it would be like 50+ hours of not sleeping. Something I was in no hurry to have to fight through. I may be good, but after what is effectively staying up for 3 days straight (I hadn't really slept last night for... uh... reasons... what? I never said _good_ reasons), even I would make plenty of mistakes.

I charge forward into the swiftly closing path I had carved, cutting down any of the robots—a single strike was more than enough if in the right place, with my sword or my gauntlet—that got in front of me. I wasn't running full speed because while Asuna and Tazen were both pretty much speed build and I was 'strength' build, my base abilities were much better and I was much higher level. As a result of not running full speed, both Asuna and Tazen could keep up and they would kill or knock away any that closed in on our sides until we made it to the exit with not much injury.

The nearest protected zone happened to be just around a corner, so I stumble over there and sit down against the wall before slipping down sideways into a lying position on the ground and closing my eyes.

 _I really need to sleep._

* * *

"Why did she just fall asleep?" Asuna wonders, referring to Kiriko, who was now out cold on the ground.

"You know that thing that she sometimes does where she moves really, really fast and has insane reaction time and generally acts like the rest of the world is in slow motion for her?"

"Yeah. Like she just did when she got through to us."

"I think that the reason she doesn't do it all the time is that it has a serious mental toll. Whenever she does it during a boss fight, or any other time, she generally looks drowsy afterward, just enough to notice even though she's good at hiding it."

"So you think her being asleep is a consequence of that?"

"It seems to line up."

"How long do you think she'll be out for?"

"Who knows. Still, we owe her to watch over her. She did just save our lives, if nothing else," Tazen says.

Asuna shudders as she realizes how close to death they'd just come. "Yeah."

"We'll need to be more careful in the future, Kiriko won't always happen to be around to save us," Asuna says.

"I agree. That was extremely stupid of us and we should have seen that trap coming," Tazen says.

"Oh come on. We killed a miniboss for that chest, how were we supposed to know it would be a trap. Boss chests aren't supposed to be traps, that's just evil," Asuna says.

"You know what else is evil? Trapping 10000 people in a game and forcing them to fight for their lives," Tazen says.

"Point taken," she acknowledges.

"Still, we should probably actually use the fact that we're in a guild and build a party."

"You know... Kiriko looks so much more... normal... when she's asleep," Asuna comments.

Tazen nods his agreement. "And younger."

"Speaking of looking younger, how old do you think Kiriko is? And for that matter, how old are _you_?" Asuna asks.

"I'm 15, 16 fairly soon, what about you?"

"I'll be 16 in a couple months."

"I find it hard to judge Kiriko's age. From her appearance, she's obviously a teenager, but that's about as accurate as _that_ is, she could be anywhere from 13 to 17. She's more knowledgable and intelligent than most people are at any point in their lives. During our adventures on the first floor, she mentioned that she'd already completed her education and graduated from Stanford in the context of not being in any hurry to get out, which means she's probably on the older side and she's just a little short and childish in appearance, so I'd say she's a little older than us, 16 or 17."

* * *

Several hours later, which Asuna and Tazen spent talking and killing any monsters that came in sight, Asuna says, "I think we should wake her up and take her back to an inn. We're going to be sitting here all day otherwise."

"I suppose that's reasonable."

Asuna walks over to Kiriko and shakes her shoulder, "Wake up."

She gets no response.

She continues shaking her and attempting to wake her up until eventually, after a couple minutes, Kiriko groans and sits up, barely awake.

"What do you want?" she growls.

"To get you to an inn instead of having you sleep in a dungeon with us guarding you."

Kiriko sighs and shakily gets to her feet.

"Let's go then," she says.

"You're going to _walk_?"

"What else?"

"I was thinking of these blue shiny rocks that magically move you to places."

"It's wasteful... but whatever, I've got more money than I know what to do with anyway. Bye," Kiriko says and pulls out a teleport crystal before teleporting to the city of the 24th floor and leaving behind Asuna and Tazen.

"And she's gone. Should we get back to clearing the labyrinth?" Tazen asks.

"We've gotten plenty of rest while watching Kiriko, so sure."

* * *

"Kiriko!" I hear a familiar voice call and allow the voices owner to jump on my back and hug me.

"Hey Argo," I say tonelessly.

"You've been avoiding me," Argo pouts.

"I've been avoiding _people_ , not you specifically."

"You could have let me know where you were," Argo pouts.

"I _could_ have, that is true," I say teasingly.

"You're so mean."

"So, what do you want?"

"Is it so hard to believe that I just want to spend some time with my friend who I've barely seen in the past month?"

I sigh. I believe her and, to be totally honest, don't actually mind spending time with her.

"I just want to go explore, find something neat."

I grab her arms and lean forward sharply, making her flip over my head and land in front of me with her back to me. She spins around and pulls her hood back, smiling at me in a distinctly flirtatious manner. In fact most of her behavior around me has been flirtatious recently. _I wonder if she realizes I know she has a crush on me. For that matter, I wonder if_ she _knows that she has a crush on me. She's normally fairly aware of herself, so she's probably noticed, or will soon._

Despite that Argo was older than me, due to being shorter and more childish than me in most ways, I subconsciously treated her as if she younger than me. Though, at the same time, I was less condescending and patronizing to her than most people. Probably because she was one of the few people I considered intelligent.

I ruffle her short auburn hair and smile as she pouts as she runs her hands through to fix the mess.

"What have you been up to?" she asks.

"Just grinding. The 25th floor will be dangerous, you know."

"Like it matters for you. But yes, you've told me before."

We stand in silence for a moment.

"So... you have any ideas _what_ you want to explore?" I ask.

"There was a dungeon I tried to get through to get it in my booklet, but I couldn't actually beat it, so all I could put in for now is 'extremely difficult'. Maybe we could do that?"

"I don't mind, where is it?"

"It's a short way north of here."

* * *

 **Okay, I didn't want to cut the chapter here, but at this point, this is ridiculous.**

 **I haven't updated in who-knows-how-long and most of this chapter _was_ written in several days, which means I wrote nothing the rest of that time. I was hoping that now that AP exams (I may be homeschooled but I still take those) are over, I would be able to write, but I just don't have the motivation to write this story.**

 **So here's what's going to happen:**

 **This story won't be going on an official hiatus and I'm not dropping it, but it probably won't update for a while.**

 **Rather in the style of the author whose stories were my original inspiration for writing this story, I'm going to be writing the sequels even though this isn't finished. Each arc (Aincrad, Alfheim, Gun Gale, Excalibur, Mother's Rosario, Alicization) will be its own story (except maybe Excalibur and Mother's Rosario, since they're pretty short).**

 **Naturally, each one will have spoilers for the previous ones, but I'll try to keep things deliberately vague, at least until they're revealed in the story they actually happen in.**

 **I don't know when the first chapter of each will go up, I haven't actually started writing them, and maybe this will fail hopelessly, but at this point, I felt like I should give some sort of update.**

 **So yeah, that's the current plan. Please put down your pitchforks and torches (pretty please?).**

 **Oh right, one more thing (yes I realize I could edit what I already wrote, but it doesn't really fit there), pairings! So, basically, the pairings I've settled for are Kiriko x Yuuki and Asuna x Tazen, which means all the other (teenage (I'm not writing adult romance)) characters are still free. If you would like a specific pairing, please tell me in the form of a review or PM. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I'll consider them and see if anything works.**

 **Bye!**


	6. Chapter 55

**Just a little update to say this story is discontinued (at least as a cohesive story). Unfortunately, my plans for this story (to the extent that they even existed in the first place) are just no longer appealing. Kiriko is just too fucking overpowered in the wrong way and not interesting and generally not appealing to me. Moreover, the events I had planned for this story aren't particularly interesting until way later. Like, the only part even remotely want to write at this part is the KiriYuuki part, but I'd need to get through, Aincrad, ALO, and GGO before then, so basically, I'd need to write an entire story (or several) that I have no interest in writing.**

 **Furthermore, the existing part of this story is, frankly, fucking terrible. The number of tense mistakes alone is intolerable. Not that anything else is good. I don't feel like rewriting it either. I currently am slowly trudging along through a different fem!Kirito x Yuuki story with some help from A New Username and actual beta reading curtesy of One More Guy. A couple chapters are more or less complete, but my current plan is to write the entire thing before I post anything to avoid posting another story that will only make it a couple chapters.**

 **This story _may_ become a series of loosely connected one shots if I feel like it.**


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